WTC Dust Study Feb 29, 2012 by Dr. James Millette

[Oystein]

So nothing on the wool.

But on the dust, your right it does say ignite.
But even still what would the appearance be after it ignited. I suspect we would have the "melted metal spheres".
Like this maybe?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang/handson/steel_wool.shtml

I am pretty sure these are not metal spheres, but metal oxide spheres.

What happens there is: As the iron atoms react with surface oxygen, the crystal lattice of the iron breaks down, and a new, different lattice of iron oxide forms; during the transition, at high temperature, the material gets the chance to minimize its surface area.

 

[Steen Svanholm]

I don't know if this has been brought up, but I'd like people to correct me if my assumptions are wrong:

1. We know that a thermitic reaction (reduction) produces aluminum oxide and elementary iron.
2. We know that burning steel wool (oxidation) produces iron oxide.

3. We know that Harrit et al. claimed that they found elementary iron in the residues from their heated samples, thus indicating a reduction process. What they did find was microspheres with more or less iron and oxygen and other things in them. They therefore used the phrase "iron rich". Outside his report, however, Harrit claims that the microspheres are elementary iron.

4. We know that there are many possible sources for iron rich microspheres at Ground Zero. Dave Thomas proved that by burning steel wool. However, his microspheres are not elementary iron microspheres but iron oxide microspheres. (Harrit's iron rich microspheres are most likely also iron oxide, although not pure.)

With this in mind, one thing is puzzling me: Imagine WTC 1, 2 and 7 was in fact brought down by nanothermite the way that the Truth Movement states. Then the thermitic process would have cut a large number steel beams.

BUT would that leave only microspheres of elementary iron?

If steel is melted - be it by fire or a thematic process - would it not leave iron oxide residues?

Or does the themitic process somehow turn not only the themitic powder (Al + iron oxide) into aluminum oxide and elementary iron but also the melted drops of steel from the beams into elementary iron?

In short: What would be left:
1. Elementary iron?
2. Iron oxide?
3. Both?

It seems to me that Harrit claims concludes "3" in his report but "1" outside his report.

What do you think, folks?

 

[Steen Svanholm]

Hm, actually, I confused myself a little bit here. Because Harrit focuses on the red/grey chips - "unreacted thermite" - and the residues of ONLY that. Whereas my example covers the whole dust sample including other than the red/grey chips.

 

[Oystein]

Steen,

without replying to your post line by line, here is what you would expect if some thermite (of the Fe/Al kind; you could use other combinations of metals, but Fe and Al is what Harrit, Jones, Basile claim to have found) preparation were used to melt through structural steel:

• About half of the thermite reaction product would be metallic, elemental iron - in the first step (see below)
• About half of the thermite reaction product would be aluminium oxide, also called alumina
• Both would mostly form slag, i.e. resolidified bulks, as you need to apply macroscopic amounts to the steel. Both are prone to separate, because iron is twice as heavy or dense as alumina. However if you imagine that the towers collapse after slag formation, you could imagine that it would be pulverized and dispersed, and if it is still hot, probably form little spheres over a large range of size.
• The same is true for the molten steel: It would form slags of mostly elemental iron (with alloy partners mixed in), which might disperse to dust or spheres upon collapse.
• As small and perhaps iron particles (spherical or otherwise) tumble around, they will quickly oxidize at their surfaces, so you would not find a lot of elemental iron in the dust.
• Don't forget that you need to find as much alumina as iron.

It's a little different if you make ony small, microscopic probes of your thermite react. Then obviously, the products also come in microscopic sizes. In that case, I would think that whatever iron is produced by reducing iron oxide will quickly re-oxidize at least partially (superficially) under air.

So whether or not your reaction is a thermite reacion, you will find iron oxide, and may or may not find iron.


Better to look for alumina before (there shouldn't be lots) and after (there should be lots), for alumina is stable and will stay what it is even after long exposure to air.

 

[chrismohr]

Hi, Chris: By regular googling, I have just found that Jim Millette presented another lecture on red-gray chips at Inter/Micro Conference (9-13th July, Chicago)

The title was “Thermite in the World Trade Center Dust?” Any more info?

Hi Ivan,
Jim Millette told me about his speech, and I got the impression it was very similar to the first one he gave months ago. However, he has some new leads on samples of materials like burned-up thermitic stuff (but not LaClede! darn!). He did say the report was well-received. No new data or findings appear to have been in that speech however.

 

[Steen Svanholm]

So whether or not your reaction is a thermite reacion, you will find iron oxide, and may or may not find iron.


Better to look for alumina before (there shouldn't be lots) and after (there should be lots), for alumina is stable and will stay what it is even after long exposure to air.

Thanks for clearing that up, Oystein.

1. So how would you distinguish between iron and iron oxide spectras? I mean, to me Harrits spectras look mostly like iron oxide with some other ingridients. But how would a spectra of elemental iron look like? Or at least a spectra that could reasonably count as signs of elemental iron?

2. Interesting facts about the alumina. I did not know that. Apparently Harrit either did not look for alumina in the dust samples or did not find any. But did Millette look for it in his dust samples?


One more thing. Have you noticed that on pg. 23 (fig. 24), Harrit compares residues of commercial thermite with residues of red/grey chips. The spectras look pretty much alike to me. Is that because the residues of thermite look like the residues of many things?

 

[Redwood]

With this in mind, one thing is puzzling me: Imagine WTC 1, 2 and 7 was in fact brought down by nanothermite the way that the Truth Movement states. Then the thermitic process would have cut a large number steel beams.

Small point, but the only time I know of where thermite was actually used to demolish a structure was for one tower of the Skyride at the Chicago Exposition of the 1930s. It seems to have been done as a stunt. They didn't cut the two steel columns; they built 4 large brick cupolas about the columns, filled them with 700 kg. of thermite, and melted them. It must have been a spectacular show; somewhere, there just has to be motion picture footage of it.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Thanks for clearing that up, Oystein.

1. So how would you distinguish between iron and iron oxide spectras? I mean, to me Harrits spectras look mostly like iron oxide with some other ingridients. But how would a spectra of elemental iron look like? Or at least a spectra that could reasonably count as signs of elemental iron?

2. Interesting facts about the alumina. I did not know that. Apparently Harrit either did not look for alumina in the dust samples or did not find any. But did Millette look for it in his dust samples?


One more thing. Have you noticed that on pg. 23 (fig. 24), Harrit compares residues of commercial thermite with residues of red/grey chips. The spectras look pretty much alike to me. Is that because the residues of thermite look like the residues of many things?

Hi, Steen, XEDS spectra of pure iron (or unoxidized steel) would simply show only peaks corresponding to iron, something like here:

We don't know if Jim Millette is looking for alumina in the dust.

And yes, we have noticed that XEDS of sphere after burning of commercial thermite looks like that of some residues of WTC chips. We wonder why there is so large peak of silicon in this burned thermite, did this thermite contain silicon stuffs? Harrit did not inform us. Anyway, these spectra look like spectra of many other things, e.g. fly ash microspheres rich in iron, like here:

Therefore, those two spectra in Harrit's paper you mentioned basically do not prove any specific material or reaction

 

[Oystein]

Thanks for clearing that up, Oystein.

1. So how would you distinguish between iron and iron oxide spectras? I mean, to me Harrits spectras look mostly like iron oxide with some other ingridients. But how would a spectra of elemental iron look like? Or at least a spectra that could reasonably count as signs of elemental iron?

2. Interesting facts about the alumina. I did not know that. Apparently Harrit either did not look for alumina in the dust samples or did not find any. But did Millette look for it in his dust samples?


One more thing. Have you noticed that on pg. 23 (fig. 24), Harrit compares residues of commercial thermite with residues of red/grey chips. The spectras look pretty much alike to me. Is that because the residues of thermite look like the residues of many things?

1. Relying on XEDS spectra alone is not a good way if you want to be sure. It is possible, with some inaccuracy, to translate the relative heights of the XEDS peaks to relative amounts of the various elements, and then you could compute if there is enough oxygen to oxidize all of the other elements. I have tried that with an XEDS simulation program earlier this year, and it seemed like in one or another of Harrit's spectra, the iron possibley wasn't fully oxidized. But hard to say if it's a mix of elemental iron and Fe₂O₃, or mostly FeO, or simply inaccuracy of data.
The right way to go about it would be to use additional methods that determine the chemical bindings, such as FTIR, PXRD, TEM.

2. Harrit e.al. didn't look for any specific chemical compounds in the paper, they only looked at elemental composition.
Millette did analyse the chemical compounds and found epoxy, iron oxide, al-silicate and titanium oxide, but no Al-oxide or elemental Al.


As for the spectrum of commercial thermite: That's fishy. Fig. 24 shows twice as much Si as Al. This can't be representative of the whole sample, or it is some ****** commercial thermite which the customer should complain about. However spectra like that, with lots of O, Al, Si and Fe, with some C, Na, Mg, K, Ca mixed in, are really totally abundant in all sorts of mineral dust, whether from building construction, industry or nature.

 

[Senenmut]

Hi Ivan,
Jim Millette told me about his speech, and I got the impression it was very similar to the first one he gave months ago. However, he has some new leads on samples of materials like burned-up thermitic stuff (but not LaClede! darn!). He did say the report was well-received. No new data or findings appear to have been in that speech however.

burned up thermitic stuff such as the red gray chips???

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Hi Ivan,
Jim Millette told me about his speech, and I got the impression it was very similar to the first one he gave months ago. However, he has some new leads on samples of materials like burned-up thermitic stuff (but not LaClede! darn!). He did say the report was well-received. No new data or findings appear to have been in that speech however.

? To be honest, I don't understand what you mean by "he has some new leads on samples of materials like burned-up thermitic stuff"

 

[chrismohr]

? To be honest, I don't understand what you mean by "he has some new leads on samples of materials like burned-up thermitic stuff"

To be honest, I don't remember exactly what he said he was possibly getting samples of, but I thought it was residues of what was left behind after thermite was ignited. Sorry I didn't remember or understand exactly what kind of sample he was possibly getting.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

To be honest, I don't remember exactly what he said he was possibly getting samples of, but I thought it was residues of what was left behind after thermite was ignited. Sorry I didn't remember or understand exactly what kind of sample he was possibly getting.

So, this Jim's task has nothing common with WTC samples, am I right?

 

[grandmastershek]

burned up thermitic stuff such as the red gray chips???

Yeah Sen, what a good idea. Test the alleged thermite chips, then test them against more of the same chips. Derp, derp, derp Stundied.

 

[Senenmut]

Yeah Sen, what a good idea. Test the alleged thermite chips, then test them against more of the same chips. Derp, derp, derp Stundied.

well, i was hoping jones or basile were giving millette some of their samples.....

 

[Oystein]

well, i was hoping jones or basile were giving millette some of their samples.....

Hahaha

Chris Mohr tried to arrange that with Kevin Ryan.
It earned Chris a few lies and mean insults.
Jones, Harrit, Ryan know they are frauds. They know damned well that any good lab person will have no trouble exposing their dust as just dust, with a few paint chips. They will never release their samples.

 

[GlennB]

well, i was hoping jones or basile were giving millette some of their samples.....

Having followed this saga for a few years I must admit your post made me laugh

 

[pgimeno]

Hahaha

Chris Mohr tried to arrange that with Kevin Ryan.
It earned Chris a few lies and mean insults.

For reference:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7889310#post7889310

Jones, Harrit, Ryan know they are frauds. They know damned well that any good lab person will have no trouble exposing their dust as just dust, with a few paint chips. They will never release their samples.

Certainly. Nor will they release their FTIR/TEM data.

 

[Notinthemafia]

Just a thought and i have seen no one mention this, but iron oxide when heated in the presence of hydrogen and carbon monoxide will directly reduce the iron oxide into iron, is called Directly reduced or "sponge" iron. Heating the iron oxide in the DSC untill the epoxy burns provides both heat and carbon monoxide....

arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.2831.pdf
just read the first 2 pages

According to this paper either of the two gasses can be used alone. This can happen with carbon monoxide alone at tempratures under 570C.

In the origional Jones flame test with the OXY/ace torch it's obvious a reducing flame was used. This type of flame is fuel rich and can reduce oxides to metal. A neutral flame should have been used (so to not chemically alter the material heated). That test was just caried out to achieve a desired result. Taking an oxy torch with a line pressure of 3psi or more to a half millimeter chip of anything is just gonna burn and melt it and blow away the ashes. An oxy/ace torch can melt pretty much anything you put in its flame.

"Iron rich" microspheres could be formed just by having the fule rich smokey fire heat some rusted beams.

The spong iron can ignite BTW just like fine steel wool. Im sure you all have seen the youtube vid. Steel wool plus bic lighter = iron rich microspheres...

 

[chrismohr]

Dust Study May yet Be Published!!

Hi gang,

I just talked with Jim Millette today. After being overwhelmed with work for several months, he has now hired more help. He says that he is lining things up to complete his WTC dust study and publish the results. He's hoping to have his work situation in better control early next year so he can get back to this study, which he remains very interested in completing.

he also is interested in WTC dust samples, and more importantly, LaClede and other primer paint samples. He himself had someone scratch off a bit of paint from a traveling 911 memorial exhibit when it went through Atlanta but hasn't yet studied the flakes that were collected! he was most interested in other paint chip sources from known WTC beams and columns...

Anyway I say let's start lining these samples up. He is most interested in primary research on actual samples. Wow this may yet be completed!!